your silence will not protect you

Category: personal blog

Hello, everyone! I’m inviting you to follow my journey on my new website! Therefore, I will not be posting on unziptheselips.wordpress.com any longer.

My new website will consist of recipes, yoga, creative writing, lifestyle topics, book discussions, personal blogs, and more! It’ll be more engaging and there will be more frequent posts. You can follow my WordPress feed to access new posts in Reader and/or you can subscribe on my website via email or access my RSS feed.

The next post that is coming soon will be about how to make a blog and how to upgrade it to your own domain (and what that even means!).

I hope you will join me!

xx Vic

Welcome to the first official blog post on my new domain! Wow! I never expected to take my passion for blogging further by purchasing my own domain, but I did it! My supportive and loving girlfriend was part of the process toward believing in myself and taking that leap of faith…the Truth + Dare Podcasts…

When I finished the second season of the Podcast, “Homecoming,” I played the latest episode of my other favorite Podcast called “Truth + Dare.” The Journey Junkie, who is my favorite online yoga teacher, produces it with one of her best friends. They are both currently live on a boat with their husbands, and I find them to be super inspiring.

Anyway…it was so ironic that the first episode after their break was about Difficult Conversations because I’ve been avoiding a difficult conversation myself. The conversation I’m afraid to have is with my sister, who is a year and a half younger than me, but for some reason, I have a very small backbone when it comes to addressing issues with her. The issue I am having with her right now is how I feel like she completely ignores my girlfriend most of the time. I always give her the benefit of the doubt because 1. I don’t want to confront her and deal with whatever that entails and 2. sometimes it seems like she does acknowledge my girlfriend! But I shouldn’t be like “oh, she said hi to her this time so everything is fine” because she should be showing common courtesy every time, not just when she feels like it.

The negative impact of avoiding a difficult conversation has been manifesting in my relationship with my girlfriend as well as in my overall mental health. My girlfriend and I have been discussing the conversation that I need to have at length, I went to therapy recently to talk about it, and it consumes my mind. I’ve been worrying in the shower that I will never be able to be my authentic self unless I move out of state, away from my family, and rarely talk with them. It’s gotten pretty ridiculous, but it was perfect timing for this podcast to be released!

I didn’t even finish the podcast yet but one of the messages that really resonated with me was a quote that they shared from Elena Brower.

“What you are afraid to say is the doorway to your freedom.”

This isn’t new knowledge for me by any means, especially considering how one of my majors is Women’s and Gender Studies and this theme is critical in our discussions. Plus, this quote closely aligns with my favorite Audre Lorde essay, which is the premise of my blog!

I suppose that being confronted with this specific message again at this time was just because I needed to hear it again. In my WGS seminar yesterday, we talked about how the different contexts for when you’re reading something affects the significance of what you’re reading. For example, if I wasn’t afraid to say anything, then the quote probably wouldn’t have resonated with me as much.

Unfortunately, I am afraid to address my sister and therefore, I am suffering. I must talk to her though because it’s causing so much toxicity in my life that can be avoided. So I’m going to go through one of my DBT worksheets I got from a group therapy session in the summer to think this through. Perhaps this model will be helpful to y’all too.

How to Liberate Yourself By Asking for What You Want

(Based off of DBT handout 5)

Describe the situation.

Express your feelings about the situation.

Ask for what you want.

Explain positive effects of getting what you want and/or the consequences of not getting what you want.

1. So…I will describe to my sister how I feel like she is not particularly courteous with my girlfriend.

2. I will say that it makes me feel uncomfortable when we’re all together and by ignoring her, it hurts me because she is very important to me.

3. I will ask my sister to be more courteous toward my girlfriend because everyone deserves that, and if she had a partner or a friend around, I would be considerate of them.

4. Then I will explain that it would make me more comfortable hanging around with her and like I have a more cohesive identity because she takes an interested in the people that I am interested in.

Some arguments that my sister may have may include that she doesn’t like my girlfriend, that she didn’t realize she was being rude, and/or that she is jealous that I spend more time with my girlfriend than I do with her.

I can counter by saying that it’s okay if she doesn’t like my girlfriend (although perhaps she should consider getting to know her more before making that rash judgment), I just want her to be more respectful and courteous. If she says she didn’t realize, I will ask her to please be more conscious of it going forward, because it upsets me. If she says that she is jealous of my girlfriend and that she wants to spend more time with me, I will respond by saying that…I guess this one is the trickiest one. Perhaps I can suggest negotiating this with her more but reaffirming that it is critical that she be more courteous.

I found this exercise to be particularly helpful! I want to ponder the last counterargument a bit more but otherwise, I feel a little more prepared.

I’ve made it my goal to practice yoga daily, and so far, I’ve maintained it! It’s been…over thirty-one consecutive days. I’m not sure how many more days than thirty-one…perhaps it’s only been thirty-one days…but regardless, I’ve been practicing it daily for the entirety of January, and possibly in the tail-end of December.

Right now, I’m practicing it when I wake up, which isn’t always early. I try my hardest to get up at 7am but I end up reading the news on my phone, snoozing for a little longer, or I don’t know what I do, but I end up practicing around 8am, and sometimes later like at 11am. I’m trying to practice in the early morning though because according to Light on Yoga, a great book I’ve been reading and using to foster my practice, yoga must be practiced either in the early morning or in the late evening.

Light on Yoga has been a great, informative book because it provides a background to the practice as well as pictures and step by step instructions for pretty much every asana I’ve encountered since I began my practice in late August. Additionally, it includes yoga practices for various ailments one may have and it has courses to develop the skills necessary to improve, strengthen, and deepen your practice. It’s an excellent book. I’ve taken some notes on the book so I will publish what I’ve learned at some point because I think it’s important to know. Some yoga practices have completely appropriated it, and I think it’s important to know the roots of it.

Also, I am looking for other books about yoga that provide insight into the culture and history of the practice. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know!

Anyway…yes so my practice has been great in the month of January! I had my girlfriend take some photos of me to see my improvement. I’m not going to post them here right now, but I will. I want to incorporate more photos into my blog.

The cool thing about photos and about having her take them is that I didn’t realize until she told me, and showed me, that I was doing the “down dog” pose wrong. My back was super arched and my knees were bent so…I worked on it a bit and now I can do it properly.

Initially, my yoga goals were to achieve crow pose and wheel pose, but my right wrist is quite weak from playing tennis for several years prior to college, so I am going to work on doing a split and wheel pose. This week I’ve been working on stretching my hamstrings, and there has been a significant improvement, but there is still a long way to go. I have barely attempted back flexibility because I have several fears surrounding it…but I am working on it. Just more slowly.

The last thing I want to share is that I am considering either attending a Yoga Teacher Training or a Yoga Retreat! Since I will be graduating in a couple of months, I would like to take that opportunity to expand my practice. I’ll update y’all if this idea comes to fruition!

How do you navigate this? By this, I mean the title of this post. Specifically when your SO is the same gender as you are.

I worry that I’m not dealing with this appropriately…lemme explain.

My family knows about my girlfriend and they’ve met her. She’s come to the house several times. They don’t seem to have any objections (believe me, if they did, they would make it known) but they also don’t seem particularly excited about her. I can only assume it’s because she is a woman, but honestly, who knows. Reasons I have come to this conclusion though include:

They never ask me about how she is.

They never ask me about how we are.

They don’t get excited when she is around, whereas I would expect them to get excited if she was a guy.

My sister barely acknowledges her when she’s literally next to me. Perhaps she feels shy/uncomfortable though?

I constantly worry about how they perceive her, and why they perceive her a certain way. For this reason, I tend to be hesitant to share activities we do together and anything that kids may tell their immediate families about their significant other.

I’m stressed that either 1. they don’t take our relationship seriously and/or 2. they’re just tolerating her because they care about me, but they don’t really like her, or accept her, for whatever reason.

I’ve been considering to bring it up with them but then I don’t want to address it because I’m afraid of instigating a dispute or an intense conversation…I just want them to more openly welcome her and to care about her because I care about her.

Of course, I’ve discussed it with her at length because I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable or bad about anything. She says she fixated on it before but she doesn’t let it get to her anymore…unfortunately it continues to affect me because they are my family.

If anyone has any suggestions for me in regards to how to navigate this, please let me know. I would greatly appreciate it.

I seem to frequently forget this when I’m pitying myself and inviting anyone close to me to join…but my girlfriend kindly reminded me. She wasn’t being intentional when she reminded me, she was talking about her excitement for life after college (which is the main theme of my pity parties lately), and she said something about things always working out. Which reminded me…things generally, eventually work out for me too. So I should stop throwing these pity parties. Besides, they’re not a good look.

But yeah…the universe unfolds as it should. It didn’t forget about me. I’ve written about this before, several times. There are years of evidence that whenever I feel like my life is going to crash and burn for whatever reason, the universe tends to swoop in and keep me afloat, and I usually am able to even swim too.

So…in regards to this “after-college-job-search,” I’m going to get a job offer! Soon! I’m going to continue to sell myself and be the best I can be and someone is going to eventually come around and love what I have to offer. I am a desirable candidate who is intelligent and who has a lot to offer!

I will keep this in mind when I attend the job fair this week. Wish me luck!

I want to upgrade my blog. I don’t mean that I want to redesign it, which I usually do about every year to some degree…but this time, I actually want to invest in my blog. I want to take it more seriously and I want to rebuild the community I used to have.

My girlfriend has been urging me to do it, but I dismissed it until about two weeks ago. I think it’d be a great idea because I’m graduating in a couple of months so I’ll be able to invest more time into it. Also, if I get a job, it’ll be a nice outlet for me. I will continue to write no matter what I’m doing, but I think it’s about time I take it seriously, just for myself. I want to be able to be more creative and have more control over my blog.

Although this sounds fantastic, the only thing that is preventing me from pursuing it right now is that I have no knowledge of the blogging world. I’ve been doing some research on it but I don’t have too much time to do that since I’m also finishing my honors thesis. Perhaps I’ll spend more time looking at it this weekend and next weekend…I would like to start working on it in February but I don’t know if that would be too overwhelming.

Some things I’ve been considering is using an outside provider, like SiteGround, to provide me with a premium WordPress account. One blogger that I love uses that site and I talked to a representative and they were immensely helpful. There are different providers though and they charge different prices and have different packages…it may help for me to figure out what type of package I want in order to make my decision. I don’t know what the goal of my blog is, though.

I’d like to continue to do pretty much what I’m doing now, but vamp it up a bit. I like how my blog is a conglomerate of different types of writing. I feel like aside from writing more frequently and diversifying my post mores, I really want the writing community back. What I wrote about years ago, when I first started this blog, was how I was previously using an app called Opuss, which I believe is no longer in service. But it was a tight-knit community of writers and we collaborated a ton, it was fantastic! I miss having that type of interaction with people…so…I’m going to attempt to regain that. Soon. The changes will occur soon.

If anyone has any suggestions or input into the world of upgrading blogs, please comment to let me know!